IRRIGREEN

Irrigreen Controller Is A Refined Device For Water-Printing Sprinklers

I replaced my aging sprinkler system with an Irrigreen system about a year ago and have been impressed by the efficiency and effectiveness. So when the company contacted me to see if I wanted to check out their third-gen controller, I jumped at the chance.

For those unfamiliar, Irrigreen sprinkler heads work more like inkjet printers than traditional sprinklers. Rather than performing what I like to call "lawn care theater," where your sprinkler creates a cloud of vapor that gets blown away rather than watering your lawn, Irrigreen sends out a multi-level spray in one direction and slowly passes that over the area you've defined on your lawn. Kind of like what you'd do if you were standing in the middle of your lawn with a hose. This high pressure soaking ensures that the water ends up only where you want it to. The end result is that you're able to get the same amount of irrigation with less water.

Refined by Customer Feedback...My somewhat shallow complaint about Irrigreen's second-gen controller was that it looked rather utilitarian. Anyone used to smart sprinklers like Rachio would have been put off by the complete lack of on-device controls and visible wiring connections.

On-device controls make installation and operation a breeze. Anthony Karcz

The new Irrigreen controller has been massively refined based on customer feedback. It now has a friendly LCD information panel on the controller itself, a control dial for navigating menus, and just looks more polished all around. It's also easier to install, with no need for hardwired power. You can just plug it into an available outlet.

Speaking of installation, if you have someone doing the install for you, you no longer have to hover around and help them out with the app. There's a handy QR code on the lid of the controller that irrigation professionals can scan to get the app, with information on the label on how to access the system. The new on-controller dial and buttons makes it extremely easy to operate without having to have your phone handy, for those times that you want to water a portion of your lawn but your phone is inside.

Adding a new controller to an existing Irrigreen system was a unique experience. Once everything was wired into the panel, we walked around the yard, gathering identifier data from each sprinkler. Irrigreen is still tweaking this process, as my zone names and pictures didn't transfer to the new system but more importantly, my sprinkler zone shapes did. As those are the most time consuming part of setting up an Irrigreen system, I was extremely relieved.

The one caveat is that the Bluetooth connectivity and onboard storage is only on the more recent versions of the sprinklers. If you have original Irrigreen sprinklers, they may not have the extra chips for the Bluetooth magic.

This was on a pre-production system though. Irrigireen is working on automating the remapping of your system when you upgrade your controller to the next generation, eliminating the need to walk from sprinkler head to sprinkler head altogether.

The new controller looks much nicer from the outside as well. Anthony Karcz

Additionally, the new controller has dual-band WiFi…something that I've been begging smart things manufacturers to adopt for years. Getting a wireless signal outside of your home is difficult. Not only is it usually on the edge of your network, it has to punch through walls and pipes to get to your Irrigreen box. This upgrade ensure that you'll be able to connect more consistently.

The new controller will set you back $1,570 and comes with three years of weather monitoring (there's no info on the site what weather monitoring will cost after that period). It's pricey, but if you pay for water, the new controller will pay for itself over time by using up to 50% less water overall. If you're starting a new Irrigreen system from scratch, the price has come down slightly from a year ago. A third-gen controller and one sprinkler is now $1,954 (down from $2,000).

Irrigreen App Upgrades...Good news for all Irrigireen users, to go along with the new controller, they've given their app a major upgrade. Now you can do a deep dive into the composition of each zone. Enter what kind of soil, grass, etc. you have in each zone and Irrigreen gives you a watering recommendation. A simple slider makes it drier or wetter—no more having to guess what percentage you should pick for watering the zone.

Weather data is much better now, with the app making smarter decisions overall. Unlike in recent memory when the system was trying to water my lawn after a 200 year rain event because "it's been hot and dry out," I don't find myself having to stop Irrigreen from overwatering.

You still can't top off a zone, which is something you can do with a Rachio system. It's nice for those times when the online weather information for your area doesn't match up with actual rainfall (which happens more often than you think). Hopefully this will show up in a future app update.

That’s the nice thing about app-powered sprinkler systems, you can get additional functionality with an app update.

And for those of you who have your entire smart home mapped to Alexa, there's good news. You can now use Alexa to water, schedule your irrigation, turn off your system, and see if your system is running.

Overall, it’s a great maturation of the Irrigreen system. Both the hardware and app updates show that they’re listening to their customers and making wise decisions.

Anthony Karcz